Cost of uni for parents

[TeenLifeMum]

I’ve read multiple threads on here about the cost of uni and parents supplementing about £800 per month. Is this your experience?

my question is really aimed at those who earn too much to qualify for anything above the minimum loan but aren’t crazy rich.

For context, I wonder if I need to plan for remortgaging or getting a loan to support all 3dc through. One will have one cross over year but the other two are twins so will be the same time. I don’t have a spare £2,400 per month available. Hoping for some real life experiences. (I do expect dc to have a pt job but wouldn’t expect lots of hours).

I'm dreading this!

DS isn't sure if he wants to go to uni ( i think he should, it will be the making of him) but there is no way we can afford it. DH is paid well, and he would only get the min loan, he knows he would have to work, and I'm more than happy to pay for gym membership, phone, send food parcels, but we haven't got £££ spare each month for rent.

I have suggested staying local ish - a few hours away, living in halls for the first year and then living at home/ commuting after that. This obviously depends on time table, but a b & b a few nights a week with travel, isn't going to be as much as rent - or am I crazy??

I’m shocked if that’s true!! My parents gave me £0 over the three years I was in Uni (though that was 10 years ago). I did work weekends to support myself too. Is this £800 on top of the student receiving the basic student loan?

We pay accommodation-year 1 was £9500 for the year; this year rent is £750 a month. DC works all holidays to save for spending money. Gets minimal loan. It’s tough, am not gonna lie

The student loan is supposed to support the student through the holidays as well as the term time. Presumably during the holidays the student lives rent free at home and probably has food provided so he has food and rent covered all year.

To add my daughter does budget well and manages just fine on the money we send her each week, she doesn’t miss out. Some people on here have said about topping up to the value of the maximum loan but my daughter has friends on her course that do receive the full loan (a couple are from Wales and classed as coming from a different country so they receive a much higher maintenance loan than her) they don’t have to budget, go on holiday twice or three times a year and have money left over at the end of each study year so they don’t need to work in the summer which is great for them but I’m glad my daughter has learnt to budget and has a good work ethic.
Also, she does have a car which we gifted to her and we help heavily with running costs/insurance etc so we do have this yearly expense as well.

@TeenLifeMum

You can refuse to give your financial information and then they will be entitled to the full amount of maintenance loan.

DD will get just under £5k in maintenance loan as our household income is close to the threshold. My parents give her an extra £50 a month. I'm anticipating she will be able to pay for food, travel, entertainment, books and materials on that.

The halls are £7800 for the year however, and that will be for us to pay - 7800 divided by 12 is £650/month (although the actual bill comes divided into three lump sums).

I would strongly advise you to choose university carefully. Leicester, Sheffield, Lancaster, Swansea, Aberystwyth etc are much cheaper to live and rent property in than the likes of Bath, Bristol, York, Exeter etc

Have put 2 x DDs through university (annoyingly, both did 4 years). In both cases, their minimum loan covered living costs (supplemented by part time/holiday jobs), and we paid accommodation, which has varied from £450 to £650 per month. This seems to be the norm for a lot of people.

Last year was unexpectedly tough, as DH was out of work for a few months. We had both girls to support so we had to dip into our savings. This year, all change - DD1 has found a well-paid grad job but will be living at home and paying US rent! Just one more year left for DD2 so there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Not true! If you decline to give any income information, they get the minimum loan, not maximum!

DD has minimal loan & we pay about £450 a month plus buy lots of food when we drop off and pay for her phone. She also has a pt job. If she ever needs anything extra, she knows she can ask.

I'm widowed and have only just cleared some of my ex husbands debts, those which I felt needed to be paid, and paid for his and his father's funeral. Youngest daughter has just returned to student accommodation today and her grant/loan is £6250, accommodation is £8500. She works in a bar 3 nights per week and we simply couldn't exist otherwise.
Supporting a student on one wage is so difficult.

We were blunt - if DC wanted somewhere like Bristol we couldn’t pay the full accommodation cost as we simply didn’t have it. So if that’s where they wanted, they’d need a gap year working to have towards the shortfall.

It’s a stretch - and summer holidays abroad are a thing of the past - but we’ll get through it.

No, nothing like that amount (I've had 3 go to 3 different Universities. Youngest is still there).

But you don't have to re-mortgage.
They need to be involved in the decision making. They need to know that you will top up to the max loan, but, due to the fact there are 3 of them, you won't be able to do more than that. They will need to to set out all the decisions they need to take, and to point out what a difference it could make.
They then make choices.

About Where they go.

What sort of accommodation they apply for (and part of the research is how likely they are to get accommodation within the budget range). Catered / not. En-suite / not. a bit further off campus / not. etc.
How far they go from home (travel costs need to be factored in).
Their expectations in terms of what they spend money on.
Their expectations in terms of how many hours they will work when at University.
Their choices in terms of taking a year out and doing some serious earning / saving.
Their choices in terms of working during the 6th form.
Their choices in terms of working during holiday times.

The combination of all these choices.

I've got 2 at uni.
They get minimum maintenance loan which doesn't even cover rent-and they have lowest cost accommodation.
They've both worked during the summer to get some savings behind them.
How we've subsidised has varied.
DD1-1st year we paid rent which was around £550 a month ( which was cheapest uni halls for her uni) and she lived off maintenance loan.
2nd, 3rd and 4th year's ( had placement year) was in private accommodation which was cheaper, although grim!, so topped her up around £400-£450 a month.
DD2 - official uni halls were astromonically expensive, so she rented IQ student accommodation which was cheaper and we top her up around £400 a month.

Look at accommodation costs when applying for unis, they do vary uni to uni. Book accommodation early to get cheapest room which generally sell out first.
Consider private halls if cheaper.
Look at contract length when calculating cost of accommodation. The shorter the contract the better. 40 week contract is ample but a lot of accommodation will only do 48 week which is longer than the uni year - they are finished by beginning of June.
If possible they should work during summer to build up savings.
Also worth applying for campus jobs, i.e in student bar, restaurant, ambassador etc as then they will still be able to come home during the holidays.
Some companies, sainsbury, morrisons, matalan etc offer student contracts so you can work in uni town when at uni and home town during holidays
Bursaries are worth looking into but I think a bit thin on the ground and hard to get.
When DD1 went to uni I upped my hours at work and the extra income (almost!) covered topping her up.

As pp said visiting open days is important but cost of transport and perhaps accommodation really adds up.
It also cost a quite a bit to kit them out in the first year with everything they need. But charity shops are good hunting grounds.

Not true unfortunately
We didn't give our financial information as we knew there was no point since we earn too much for DD to get anything other than the minimum, and that is exactly what she did get.

We’ve got three going through Uni. One is abroad and the costs are significantly lower there and she also teaches to earn a bit of extra money, however we still pay out over £2,000 in total a month to top them all up. Maintenance loan doesn’t touch the sides unfortunately. One DD can’t work as the course is just not compatible. Final DD just budgets extremely well to live within her means which allows her to also work a voluntary position that will greatly compliment her course and add to her CV with relevant experience. And as a PP said, sometimes rent is due well before maintenance loan is paid. So DD2 has rent due in three lots this year, first was due beginning of July, with no maintenance loan being paid til she goes back in September. We had to find that up front. The only saving grace for us is, all the uni starts coincided with our mortgage payments ending, couldn’t have done it otherwise.

This is absolutely not true!

Honestly, don't you think we'd all be doing that if it were true???

With regard to Y1 accommodation costs, be aware that although you get a chance to express (often multiple) preferences there is no guarantee you will get any of those you have asked for. So don't bank on getting the cheapest because lots of others will want it too.

We're also on over £2k a month - there is also the fact that deposits for housing are usually required before the last one is released etc.

I don't think the message regarding uni costs actually hits many people until it is too late to save. We all hear about maintenance loans and assume this will cover all expenses but the reality is quite different. The biggest shock was first year DD didn't get the halls she wanted and we had to pay £1k a month for alternative accommodation as we had no choice. Also the fact that student loans are not paid monthly but in 3 tranches in Oct, Dec & April so you have to bridge that gap until the first payment in plus deposit and initial outlay to get them kitted out. Then there is the fact that you pay rent for pretty much 10-12 months of the year when they are actually not there for all of this time. Oh and let's not forget about paying deposit to secure next years accommodation in November when you are still recovering from all this.

we have student accommodation we rent and see student struggling with having little money

livihg away is massively overrated

myself i lived away 2 years and stayed home 2 years and staying home was better as i simply had more money

my dc won’t be getting £800 a month when they go to uni simply because the government says i should pay it

there are 3 red brick unis within communities distance so they can go there

why should the whole family suffer when courses are much the same

the cost of uni doesn’t equate to the future earnings anyway a lot of the time and add on all the additional extras from living away, it’s just not worth it

most of dc mates who have gone uni are going local for this reason

or taking apprenticeships

the idea of someone taking a degree like english or history and racking up debt for 3 years to live in leeds or newcastle is crazy when let’s face it most end up teaching on £26k!

Mine all had /are having a great time away at Uni and I am happy to fund that
Am sure some people are happy to be at home ,but the 2 experiences are totally different

We live an hour from central London and I’ve told dc1 if she wants London she needs to commute from home, I don’t know if this is unfair?

We ruled out London as too expensive and Scotland, N.I and north east out as getting their costs so large - focusing mainly on Midland, North and Wales. Steering away from Bath and Bristol after looking at costs. My parents did similar to me based on distance and getting to and from as it was term time only accommodation in halls at the time.

(a couple are from Wales and classed as coming from a different country so they receive a much higher maintenance loan than her) they don’t have to budget, go on holiday twice or three times a year and have money left over at the end of each study year

Education is devolved - so N.I Scotland and Wales have different systems.

In Wales all student get given the full maintenance amount - which as some posters have pointed out in some areas doesn't cover accommodation costs and living costs.

It is hugely helpful - means our kids didn't have to take a year out working

However parental income still has to be given to work out how much is grant ie doesn't need paying back and how much is loan - though I believe it still 30 years here to pay over not 40 like in England now.

I can only assume people you refer to come from wealthy families and would have been okay anyway as DD1 had to budget though it's not as tight as many of her friends and GF also from Wales has to work to cover Bath Uni costs despite the same generous help from Welsh government.

Also in our bit of Wales to my surprise there don't seem to be the seasonal summer job I managed to pick up as a student.

It is a much better system than England without a doubt though % wise there are still fewer 18 year old getting to Uni than in England. Though there have been pollical calls to make it only for Welsh students at welsh universities so have to keep an eye on for younger chidden.

Also the fact that student loans are not paid monthly but in 3 tranches in Oct, Dec & April so you have to bridge that gap until the first payment in plus deposit and initial outlay to get them kitted out. Then there is the fact that you pay rent for pretty much 10-12 months of the year when they are actually not there for all of this time. Oh and let's not forget about paying deposit to secure next years accommodation in November when you are still recovering from all this.

The upfront costs were a surprise - lucky there had been some savings made over 18 years by us and IL (and we had a saving for getting to and from uni. Plus been putting household items away for years for DD1.

It not cheap option at all for anyone.

This discussion has been eye-opening. DS is only 10 but I'm glad I decided to read it!